Kid Omega

Contents

Biography

Xavier Institute

Quentin Quire joined the student body of the Xavier Institute after Professor X's return from averting a war with Genosha and the rebuilding of the X-Mansion. He immediately stood out as a brilliant intellect and quickly became Xavier's prize pupil who taught him how to control his powers when it first appeared leaving him confused, though the extent and type of his mutant abilities were never clearly defined. Quire appeared to be a very powerful telepath, and the Stepford Cuckoos described him as having a 'see-through mind', but he was not necessarily limited to that. Quentin often hung out with Glob Herman, and had a crush on Sophie, one of the Stepford Cuckoos. However, something about Quire disturbed the Cuckoos, though Emma Frost dismissed it as academic rivalry.

Omega Gang: New X-Men

While a student at Xavier's, Quire invented the anti-gravity floats for Martha Johansson's brain canister, and exposed the charisma-powered Slick's true, ugly body to the other students. On his birthday, Quentin received a call from his parents, who told him he was adopted. This seemed to destabilize him and he went to town, getting a haircut reminiscent of Bolivar Trask's depiction of a mutant overlord, from a newspaper that was published the day Quire was born. Quire also seemed to hop on the bandwagon calling for vengeance for the recently murdered mutant designer Jumbo Carnation, and took to wearing clothing based on the Trask mutant overlord illustration, which happened to be one of Jumbo's creations. He also debated with Professor X about the merits of the school's policies, wondering if Xavier would allow any dream other than his own to exist. Shortly afterward, Quire and a group of like-minded students visit town wearing the Trask-overlord clothes, and Quire convinces them to take the mutant drug Kick. They accost a gang of humans in an alley and kill or maim them all. When Herman asks what had happened to a human Quentin himself had murdered, Quire replies he had carved his name across the man's mind. Back at school, Xavier confronts the students, but Quire is not implicated. Quire and his gang later go to a mutant tattooist and have their arms marked with an Omega symbol over an X, then attack U-Men Central. Returning to school, the "Omega Gang" ambushes Professor X with a baseball bat and clamps his head in a thought-proof helmet. The next day, the school's "Open Day" to parents and the media, Quire publicly proclaims it is "open season on humans" and starts a riot.

Riot at Xavier's

Some of the students joined Quire in protesting Xaviers' policies, but most of the damage was done by the Omegas themselves, until they were subdued by Cyclops, Beast, Emma Frost, and Xorn. However, with Quire still guarding Professor X, the situation threatened to continue, Quire even mentally subduing Wolverine with a memory of his past life. Xavier eventually freed himself of the helmet and confronted Quentin, calling his thought-proof helmet and his plans of revolution "flimsy." However, the altercation was not officially ended until the Stepford Cuckoos, led by Sophie, used Cerebra and a dose of Kick to boost their shared powers. They blasted through to the grounds and confronted Quire, who confessed that his motivation for the ordeal was to impress Sophie, who he was attracted to. This uniformly disgusted the Cuckoos, who mocked his motivations and defeated him with a massive telepathic shockwave. Disoriented, Quentin apologized, stating that he started everything because of his desire to impress Sophie and his own disrupted sense of identity upon discovering he was adopted. Emma Frost chastises him for his recklessness, as she reveals the now deceased Sophie in her arms. Quire was taken to the Infirmary, where Henry McCoy tried to stabilize him, but his body was being burnt out by his own psionic energy. This was apparently the result of his overdoses of Kick, which caused a secondary mutation that changed his brain into faster-than-light energy, apparently putting him in telepathic contact with everyone on the planet simultaneously and across time. Seeing that Quire was terminal, Professor X called for Xorn, who opened his helmet to expose Quire to the mini star in his head, and Quire "left the mortal plane." Quire's final words when Xorn "healed" him were vaguely prophetic of many of the coming events in Morrison's final run of New X-Men, such as Xorn later being revealed to be Magneto, Xorn's eventual destruction of Manhattan, and the actions of Sublime, a bacterial entity that claimed to be the cause of some of the human/mutant hatred and aggression then occurring.

A Higher Plane of Existence

However, Quire was not truly dead, and Xavier announced to the student body that they literally believed him to have ascended to a higher plane of existence. Quentin remained in a dormant, semi-alive, energy form in a containment unit on Beast's lab table. The potential future shown in the New X-Men story "Here Comes Tomorrow" indicated that Quentin was destined to become an avatar for the Phoenix Force. A young boy, wearing a Phoenix costume and Quentin's distinct pink haircut, is seen telling Jean Grey, who vaguely recognizes him, that she doesn't have long to set the events in the timeline right. A few months later, when a fragment of the shattered Phoenix Force returned to Earth, it sensed Quire and investigated him, thinking he might be Jean Grey. Though the Phoenix passed Quire up, it shocked him back to consciousness and he reconstituted his body. Furthermore, he sought out and reanimated Sophie's corpse, but was unable to complete the process, so he set off to find the Phoenix Force so he could be with his love. Quire found the Phoenix, which had resurrected Jean Grey to attract Cyclops' attention, engaged in battle with the X-Men. Just prior to his arrival on the scene, the X-Men got the Phoenix to inhabit Emma Frost, Cyclops's current lover, and imprisoned both her and Scott inside a containment vessel. Quire arrived and broke the containment chamber open, releasing the Phoenix fragment. Quentin then asked the Phoenix to resurrect Sophie, which she did. Sophie was still disgusted by him (and/or his actions) and chose to return to death. Quire broke down in anguish, and the Phoenix left him to his "sickness". Having spent too much of his energy, Quire apologized to the X-Men for his rash behavior and returned to his non-corporeal state. He remains in the beaker in Beast's lab.

Nation X

Beast brings Quentin's container to his lab on Utopia after the X-Mansion is abandoned. Finding life on a higher plane to be "boring," Quentin revives himself and decides to become a villain and secretly destroy Utopia, claiming that the X-Men stole his idea to create a mutant nation. He elects to make his endeavor a game and selects Martha to be his arch-nemesis and gives her seven and a half minutes to stop him. Martha attempts to alert the X-Men and locate Quentin, but he manages to intercept and taunt her at each attempt, ultimately smashing her container and leaving her to die. Martha realizes that Quentin has infiltrated Cerebra to destroy the island and attempted to take revenge on the Cuckoos by putting them in a mental loop. Martha manages to break the Cuckoos free, who quickly defeat him.

Powers and Abilities

Powers

Quentin is an Omega level telepath. Due to his secondary mutation Quentin has evolved into a non-corporeal life-form existing as a disembodied consciousness.

Telepathy: Capable of using deep and subtle influence. Also capable of displaying various psionic feats with the minds of others including reading and communicating with thoughts over vast distances.

Mass Manipulation: ability to subtly use deep influence upon multiple people, allowing him to manipulate their perceptions, better judgment, wills and common sense.

Telepathic Tracking: enhanced psionic senses enable him to detect and track other sentient beings by their unique psionic emanations (thought patterns contained in the psionic portion of the spectrum) especially if they pose a threat to his well-being in his immediate vicinity.

Telepathic Cloak: Can mask his presence from being detected by others. His abilities can at times go undetected or be counteracted by other more powerful telepaths depending on their level of skill in using their own psi abilities. He can extend these defenses to others around him as well.

Mind Control: capable of controlling the minds of others but only one at a time and if the target is in his physical presence.

Telepathic Illusions: ability to create illusions to make himself seem to be invisible, look like someone else, or make others experience events that are not truly happening.

Mental Amnesia: Can erase any awareness of particular memories or cause total amnesia.

Psionic Blasts: can project psionic force bolts which have no physical effects but which can affect a victim's mind so as to cause the victim pain or unconsciousness.

Astral Projection: can project his astral form from his body onto astral planes or the physical planes. In the physical plane he can only travel in astral form over short distances. In the astral plane, he can mentally create psionic objects and manipulate the aspects of his environment.

Telekinesis: allowing him to levitate and manipulate objects and others, generate force fields, and fly at supersonic speeds

Psychic Intelligence: possesses advanced cognitive and mental abilities allowing him to organize and construct his thoughts at accelerated rates, process data at high speeds, construct and formulate his thoughts with vast quantity and quality, project ideas and impressions into the minds of others, disable existing psychic phenomena, and naturally shield him from psychic assaults. He thinks ten million brilliant thoughts per second.